Lady Be Good

by Nancy Martin

  Grace laughed, but thought a few steps ahead and finally frowned. “Wait a minute.”

  “Second thoughts already?”

  Sternly, she said, “Are you offering to drive me all the way to Philadelphia because you want to see me naked, as you so charmingly put it yesterday? Or because you think I’m going to start asking people questions about Jake Kendall’s death and get into trouble?”

  He cocked his head and squinted. “Is there a right answer to that question?”

  “Are you worried about me?”

  He shook his head. “I think you can take care of yourself. How about it? Can you be ready to leave in half an hour?”

  “You’re giving me thirty minutes to get ready to spend the day with you?”

  He laughed. “We could save some time and shower together.”

  “Somehow, I don’t think that would save time at all,” Grace said with a smile she hoped looked more composed than she felt. “And it’s definitely premature to start thinking about showers.”

  “Your loss. Be ready in half an hour. Twenty minutes would be even better.” With a grin, he got up from the counter and headed for the stairs. When he reached the upper hallway, Grace heard him start to whistle.

  She sat for a moment eyeing the dripping chunk of grapefruit in her fingers.

  She popped the grapefruit into her mouth and savored the tart and the sweet.

  Did Mama’s book tours go this way?

  6.

  A man in a pickup truck was plowing Luke’s driveway when they went out to load their luggage into the red sports car in his garage. He waved, and Luke walked outside to shout pleasantries with him over the roar of the truck’s engine.

  Then Luke came back and lifted her suitcases into the trunk of a vintage Jaguar. His own duffle didn’t take up much space next to Grace’s bags.

  “Okay,” Luke said when he closed the trunk. “Before we start this road trip, can we get one thing out of the way first?”

  Grace heart had been skittering ever since she agreed to travel with a man she barely knew. Especially a hot guy accustomed to lap dances and blow jobs and who knew what else.

  She tried to look brave. “Of course. What is it?”

  Grace had no idea what was coming when he took her by the hand and drew her outside into the sunshine. A second later, he wrapped one arm around her and pulled Grace snug against his tall frame. Her first instinct wasn’t resistance. Even though she suddenly couldn’t seem to get enough oxygen, she let her body melt into his.

  “This,” he said.

  He kissed her. A good kiss, too. Not rough, not rushed. Not too hard like he had something to prove. Just slow and warm and delicious enough to make her head spin. A seductive, persuasive kind of kiss that went on and on until she felt her brain start melting into steamy mush.

  When his tongue touched hers, Grace slipped her hands around his shoulders and held on for dear life.

  Until the snowplow driver tooted his horn.

  Luke loosened his grip on her, but Grace held on just a little longer, enjoying the strength and heat of him. He met her gaze and smiled.

  Lightly, she said, “If that kiss had been a disappointment, would you be calling me a cab and staying home?”

  “It wasn’t a disappointment,” he said, arms still around her.

  “No,” she said, hearing her voice quiver. “It wasn’t.”

  “I like mornings,” Luke informed her, letting her go.

  “Good to know,” she replied, trying to make light of the moment.

  He tucked her into the plush leather of the front passenger seat, and she tossed her fur hat into the back.

  The Jaguar was a low convertible with a long hood and a wonderful burbling engine that created a sexy kind of tremor in the car’s frame as they sat briefly in the driveway to wait for the snowplow to finish. The steering wheel was thick and wrapped with fine black leather, and the numerous dials and switches on the dash glowed from polishing. It was the sort of car that men enjoyed driving, and Luke looked happy behind the wheel.

  Grace hoped the car wasn’t the only thing he was happy about.

  He’d showered and dressed in a crew neck sweater and a pair of clean jeans that hugged him in ways the grease-stained pair had not. He smelled delicious. His mouth had tasted like peppermint and something more potent.

  She could only imagine what tomorrow morning might bring. Grace had chosen her white wool trousers and a short jacket from Nora—Chanel again, but lavender this time—with its double row of gold buttons. She’d decided to skip the pearls Nora suggested. And at the last minute she discarded the blouse Nora had tucked into her suitcase, too, and instead slipped a T-shirt over her head to wear under the jacket. More comfortable, more her own style.

  For better or worse, Grace knew she was setting off on an adventure.

  The sunshine was glorious. And with the fresh accumulation of snow, the countryside looked marvelously clean. It felt like the kind of morning to be traveling in a horse-drawn sleigh. But Grace snuggled back into the warm seat and hoped her heartbeat might slow down.

  As soon as they reached the first toll-booth, though, Grace’s cell phone jingled, dispelling her good mood. At that hour, she knew who was calling before she checked the ID.

  Mama.

  She put the phone back in her handbag without answering.

  “Somebody you’re avoiding?” Luke asked.

  “My mother,” she admitted. “Like you, she also likes mornings. She checks in with me after she makes her morning cup of tea.”

  “That must put the brakes on your social life.” He grinned at the road ahead. “Is there a Daddy Vanderbine?”

  Grace really didn’t want to discuss her parents. Not on this morning.

  But she said, “My mother was very disciplined—sitting down to write her column every morning at nine, that kind of thing. But she’s also a very big personality. She’s the real Dear Miss Vanderbine. She and my father are divorced. In fact, when they split, we took her name, my brother and I. It was part of a pre-nuptial agreement with my father. They are very different people. He used to be,” Grace said finally, “a boxer.”

  “A boxer? Wait, you mean a fighter?”

  “I don’t know if he ever won any fights, but yes. Now he owns a several gyms. Boxing gyms, I guess, for teaching.”

  “No kidding?” Luke laughed. “How did Dear Miss Vanderbine like going to the fights?”

  “As far as I know, she’s never seen a boxing match.” Grace added, “I can’t imagine what drew them together in the first place.”

  “You can’t, huh? I don’t even know them, and I can tell you.”

  “What?”

  “Sex, Princess.”

  “Well, if that’s what it was, it didn’t last.”

  “Then they were doing it wrong. Did he leave, or did she kick him out?”

  “I can’t be sure. They never argued in front of us.”

  “Of course not. That would be rude,” Luke said lightly. “Maybe he hit the road because he couldn’t handle the pressure of good manners all the time.”

  Maybe so. Although he visited his children regularly and still kept in touch with Grace, Daddy seemed relieved to live apart from Dear Miss Vanderbine. He always brought a little naughtiness when he showed up for visits, though. Grace had a fond memory of sitting on the back porch of the Connecticut house with her father while he taught both his children how to spit watermelon seeds across the back yard.

  She said, “Good manners do not have to be a restraint. They’re a framework for happiness.”

  Luke shot her a skeptical look. “That sounds like a line to me.”

  “It’s the blurb for the book.”

  “I think one of my aunts had a copy when I was a kid. It was old and losing its pages.”

  “She might have had a copy of my grandmother’s version. Back a generation, the Vanderbines were a big deal in New York and Philadelphia. But they lost their money in the stock market crash, an
d my grandmother decided to write an etiquette book to keep the family afloat. She passed it to her daughter, my mother, along with the silver and the old dishes. It’s the family legacy.”

  “How’s it going for you? Being the new Dear Miss Vanderbine? Besides showing your underwear on television, that is?”

  “Don’t remind me!” Grace held back a sigh. “I thought I could slip into the role, but Mama is—it’s hard. I don’t quite fit the mold.”

  “The mold? Do you have to be the same person she is?”

  “It worked for her. It worked really well. Mama was always the kind of hilarious interview that made her very a popular guest on TV. Half Joan Rivers, half Martha Stewart. You should have seen her with Whoopi Goldberg. And any time a famous person made a public faux pas, the media called Dear Miss Vanderbine for an opinion. She always came up with an acerbic sound bite. But me,” Grace said at last, “I don’t have her knack for it. I flash my panties by mistake.”

  “You’ll get the hang of it,” Luke said. Then, “I guess you have to play the game the way she wants you to? Because it’s lucrative?”

  “It doesn’t earn the kind of money football does,” Grace said, thinking of the ring with diamonds dangling from a string in his kitchen. “But it keeps us in groceries.”

  He asked about her job before she started working for her mother, and Grace talked about magazine editing. How her enthusiasm for the work began to wane after a few years.

  “So you quit,” Luke said.

  “Not just because I was feeling restless.”

  She told him about Todd then. About his slow descent into addiction, his increasingly callous treatment of his wife, and then his death—the horrible night he was shot by his drug dealer--and how the trauma ultimately triggered her mother’s breakdown and her own career change. Telling the story, Grace felt one of the painful rushes of unexpected emotion that still came over her now and then. Her voice suddenly quavered.

  “Sorry,” she said, fumbling for her linen handkerchief. “It still hits me sometimes. Todd was such a shit at the end, but I miss him. He brought me back to my mother, though, so I’m grateful for that.”

  Luke reached over and put his hand on hers.

  In a moment, he said, “My baby sister Savannah got mixed up with drugs. Coke, then crack, then meth.”

  “Is she okay now?”

  He shook his head. “Not really. It’s—she’s a mess, and it’s my fault.”

  “Your fault?” Grace twisted her hand until she was holding his. “How?”

  For a second, she thought he wasn’t going to say anything more.

  But finally, he spoke. “A few years ago, Savannah quit college—her grades were bad, she was partying too much--and she came to stay with me and Mandy. I let her meet some friends of mine. I was doing some off-season stuff that I shouldn’t have been, and she got into it fast. She hooked up with a guy—I won’t call him a friend. He played for the team, but never got off the practice squad, and he—well, they’re together now. He got cut, and they moved to Detroit for a while, and now they’re bumming around, I guess. They’ve both been arrested a couple of times.” Luke shook his head. “She’s—it’s bad. Her situation is really why I quit the hard party life. I cleaned up my act, but it was too late. For her, that is.”

  “I’m so sorry. I know how awful it feels when you’re in the middle of it.”

  “I don’t know what to do for her now.”

  “I didn’t either.”

  “Money doesn’t help. It makes things worse. She won’t go into a program—we tried that a few times. So … . what do we do?”

  “You feel helpless,” Grace agreed. She had a feeling Luke wasn’t really asking for her opinion. “I don’t have any advice, except there are groups you can join.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been to a couple of meetings. But as soon as I walk into a room like that, all of a sudden the focus changes, you know? It starts being all about me, and that doesn’t do anybody any good.”

  They sat quietly together for a couple of miles. Grace thought about Todd and how she wouldn’t wish his hellish final years on anybody. Maybe that nightmare was still ahead for Luke, and the thought made her heart ache.

  She pulled herself together with an effort and said, “Sometimes the best thing you can do is just be supportive. And stick with your family.”

  “Yeah, the rest of us are trying not to let the situation tear us apart.”

  “I saw a photograph in my bedroom last night,” she said at last. “You obviously come from a big family.”

  “I grew up on a farm,” he told her. “Three brothers, three sisters. Savannah’s the youngest. There’s a bunch of aunts and uncles and cousins, too. We had our own team in the church softball league, the bowling league, and the Thanksgiving touch football league.”

  Grace smiled at the mental picture of all those Lazurnoviches playing sports together. “It’s no wonder you became a professional athlete.”

  “Well, I got kicked by a cow when I was four, which kinda scarred me for life. It didn’t take long to figure out sports were a good way to stay out of the barn. Plus, my dad was the high school football coach.”

  “Did you love it? Football?”

  “I was good at all sports—basketball was my favorite—and it took a while for me to get into football. My dad was tough on me. I played offense and defense, and he yelled at me more than anybody else. But I got good at it. Obviously. Got a great scholarship, thanks to him.”

  “And now he calls you on the telephone. He misses you.”

  “Yeah, he does,” Luke said with a grin. “I miss him, too, but maybe not as much. I mean, we talk on the phone a lot. We used to talk about Savannah for hours. Then--did I mention he’s a marriage advisor in the church?”

  “Oh, dear. Does he know you and your wife split up?”

  “He hasn’t accepted it yet. He gives me tips on how to get Amanda back. Since she’s already engaged to somebody else, I don’t think that’s going to happen, but my dad is relentless.”

  “Who’s she engaged to, if you don’t mind my asking? Another player?”

  “No, a doctor. Plastic surgeon. Not the guy who did her face and her—well, it was some colleague of the doc she used for a lot of changes that were supposed to make her happy. Hey, if she’s happy now, that’s great. But I have my doubts.”

  It was Luke’s phone that sounded off next—another Springsteen tune--and he answered the call. He was making more arrangements about his upcoming charity event, and as she listened Grace realized it wasn’t something small, but a wheelchair basketball tournament for veterans. Teams were coming in from all over the country to participate. From the sounds of his conversation, Luke was sponsoring the event. It also sounded important to him, and she wondered if it had anything to do with the photo of his brother wearing army fatigues.

  Luke had packed a lot of living into his young life.

  When Luke started getting into nitty gritty details with the person on the phone, Grace took the time to check her phone messages.

  Nineteen text messages and a slew of voice mails. Several from her publisher, a couple from the freelance publicist, a laughing thank-you from the television producer who said the underwear incident would go down in station history, three airline alerts, a friend calling to have lunch next week, and a message from Mama asking Grace to call when she had time to chat.

  Grace knew what kind of chat Mama had in mind. She must have heard about the television disaster. She wanted to re-hash every mistake to make sure the same epic failure didn’t happen again.

  Grace deleted her mother’s message with a click.

  No message from Nora this morning, Grace noted. Grace tried sending her a text.

  Almost immediately, Nora telephoned.

  Sounding harried, she said, “I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you last night.”

  “Don’t think twice about that.” Grace plugged her other ear to block out Luke’s phone conversation. She kept her own
voice low. “Have you tracked down Emma?”

  Nora sighed. “There have been sightings. She’s bar-hopping. I’m afraid she’s on a really bad binge this time, but I’m hot on her trail. With luck, I’ll find her today.”

  “I’ve got my fingers crossed.”

  “Thanks. Where are you? Did you get a flight?”

  “No. But I’m on my way to Philadelphia now. We’re driving. We should be there by…” Grace leaned toward Luke.

  He had ended his phone call and was dropping his cell phone into the center console. He said. “We’ll be there by noon.”

  “By noon,” Grace finished.

  “Who’s we?” Nora asked, sounding surprised. “Whose voice is that?”

  “Well….” With Luke just an arm’s length away, Grace didn’t want to explain too much.

  Nora picked up on the loaded silence. “Do you have a crazed ax murderer standing over your shoulder?”

  Grace laughed. “Nothing like that.”

  Nora’s voice sharpened. “You’re with someone, aren’t you? A man.”

  “Yes.”

  “Anyone I know?”

  “Nora, please—”

  “Don’t use your mother’s tone with me, Miss Vanderbine,” Nora said severely. “Do I know him or not?”

  “Definitely not.”

  “Hm. Should I ask yes or no questions? Is he nice?”

  “Yes.”

  “Attractive?”

  “Oh, yes,” Grace said, trying to sound as if they were discussing a very serious subject.

  “Good heavens,” Nora said, catching on fast. “Last night you didn’t—Grace, you didn’t spend the night with him?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What does that mean? Did you sleep with him or not?”

  “Not!”

  “But you stayed with him somewhere? Stranded together in the storm? Battling the elements and your own breathless desire for each other?”

  Grace laughed again and glanced at Luke’s averted profile. He was paying attention to the road, thank heaven. “That’s too many questions at once.”

  “And he’s driving you today. In a nice car, I hope?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is very good news, Grace. It’s time you put Kip behind you.”